The War Z: A Money Grab Bites Back

4Player-"Now that The War Z has been released in a state that can only be described as 'a mess', it's fairly obvious what has happened here. The War Z was developed quickly, and rashly, after DayZ gained popularity, in an attempt to hit the market before the final version of DayZ would ever see light. This was a copy-cat money grab, plain and simple. But the Achilles heel of this master plan was one so obvious that it's hard to believe Hammerpoint Interactive -the developers of The War Z- didn't seem to realize it was there. Simply put, they didn't have the technical or design sense to pull it off. And like The Three Stooges trying to stage a Reservoir Dogs style bank heist, they shot themselves in the foot before even getting up to the teller."
(DayZ, Hammerpoint Interactive, Industry, PC, The War Z)

Thinking more about this, Steam should be looked at and criticized just as much as the company who made the game. Hammerpoint may have known it was broken but Valve never bothered to test before putting it up.

And they're going to be doing pretty much the same with the Steam Box.

They can tell if a game can work or not. specially should have in this case.

Or are you saying that you want a relationship between gamers and dev based on what devs can get away with before gamers complain? And then enough have to complain to a certain level.

Which is what we've just about got now.

Honestly, realize what you're saying. This is only an extreme case of things which have already happened. No real difference than ME3's ending, Skyrim's issues of FF13. The difference being the general gaming community are neither coming to Hammerpoint's defense nor allowing them time or even asking to fix issues.

Panda, I know you're a huge pc fan but you shouldn't take mars post as an insult. He has an point.

Alot of pc gamers trust steam. So when valve put this game up on their store. Alot of pc gamers assumed it was going to be an quality game that is polished. Sadly WarZ is does not pass those requirements and alot of valve fans are pissed about that.

Except that Valve have acknowledged the issues with this and the take-down was only temporary.

Valve: From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam. We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchased the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here: https://support.steampowere...

"This is a very different issue than the ones you're talking about"How?

Valve took the game down *after* the fact that people were complaining about it, much less that Hammerpoint was using its position of authority to shut up complainers while outright lying to any and all public outlets. Just as the issue could have been resolved by Valve before it began by having a few of their own people test the game out before its release, if HP hadn't been so blatantly dishonest, run some covert damage control, things could have been dragged out for months giving them time to patch things. Just like most every other buggy title that's been put out too soon.

And again, this "lets 3rd parties offer games through us" is exactly what they plan on doing with their console.

And don't give me any double-speak bullsh*t about a restricted PC or whatever - THE STEAM BOX IS A FU*KING GAME CONSOLE!

One that's going to be unregulated so Valve can offer low licensing fees - not that quality control seems to have been removed from Sony's and MS customer service list this gen.

Like chcolatesnw said, Valve aren't directly responsible for making sure every game on Steam is up to spec, just the same way it's not Game Stop's job to do quality control on the games they put on their shelves.

On PC I haven't ever expected a game to be perfect out of the gate. I always expect on going support. Its one of the advantages of of the PC, patching is easy and quick, unlike consoles.

In the case of WarZ, the state of the game is a non-issue. The problem was misleading gamers into believing it was a finished game. Saying that it had features it didn't. This could have been solved by simply labeling the games as alpha and bringing down the price a bit.

But HP was determined to scam gamers with WarZ. And because War Inc. is also on Steam they were given a pass. Valve saw what was happening and took the game off. So Valve is off the hook. Had they done nothing or claim they were investigating I might take issue, but they didn't.

Valve has a policy of fact checking the feature lists on store pages, and of checking the overall playability of the products they sell. Valve failed to comply with their own policies, so yes, Valve is partly to blame here. They run the single biggest digital distribution service in the gaming industry, and they set the standard for the rest. If they can't stick to their own policies and their own rules then they should be ashamed of themselves.

Valve should not be responsible for a buggy and/or broken game. Bugs take too much time to expose and "broken" is subjective. I do agree that Valve should test the games but ONLY to verify the features listed on the Steam page advertising the game.

I think all Valve "has" to do is make sure the game boots up and runs. Other than that they are just another "retail store", just in this case it's digital. It's a lot like Amazon digital downloads. Do you think they check every game to see if it matches the description? I don't think they have time for that.

I only say that they should, at most, verify the feature list because they advertise it on their website. Some people look at whatever is sold on Steam has a "Valve Certified" stamp on it. The educated know that Valve just puts what the developers/publishers send them as a description/features list on their site, but the ignorant could see false advertisement as a direct reflection and a strike against the credibility of Steam. Perception is reality. Valve is a gamer's developer. They do not need/deserve to put themselves in a questionable position.

Sure, they're restoring money. But you can't restore time. They need to review games to at LEAST make sure that they don't blatantly lie about features, and not waste our time with scams in the future.

Valve shouldn't be held responsible for that. All they need to do is make sure the game boots up, runs, and doesn't crash on the operating systems the developers made the game for.

Beyond that, it's out of their control. They should not have to be forced to play through each and every game and make sure all the features mentioned by the developer are in tact. That's just plain stupid and an enormous waste of time. Though, they should make it so developers have to pay a lump sum of $$$ if any of the features mentioned to be in the game aren't in the game - false advertisement.